Buddy Holly's Rockabilly Roots Formed Deep Before He Became a Star

Of course every fan of rock and roll knows the name Buddy Holly. Before his tragic death in a 1959 airplane crash, Holly had firmly established himself as a major star. And that star was still on the rise when he died. However what most people don't know is that Holly started out by recording some great rockabilly music that helped get his career started.

Holly is proof that not all the great rockabilly acts came out of Memphis and not all the greatest rockabilly songs were released on Sam Phillips' Sun Records. Still, Holly does have a Sun Records connection just as most every rockabilly musician from the mid to late 50s does in that he was inspired by the vibrant young Elvis Presley to try his hand at rockabilly music.

Charles Hardin Holley was born in 1936 in Lubbock, Texas. Unlike so many rockabilly cats that came out of the deep south, Holly (he dropped the "e" from his last name later when he took the stage name Buddy Holly) was steeped a little less heavily in the blues and more in the country, country swing, and country bop styles. He began playing several instruments when he was very young with two older brothers teaching him everything they knew.

While still in high school he began performing blue grass and vocal duets with a friend, Bob Montgomery under the stage name of Buddy and Bob. It was 1955 when Holly saw Elvis perform and, like so many others, he was bowled over by Presley's music and stage presence. He began recording his own brand of rockabilly.

While the rockabilly music that Holly recorded was never commercially successful (much of it having been recorded strictly as demo material), it was good enough to get him noticed by promoters and record labels. By late 1955 he was opening up shows for big-name acts including Presley himself as well as Bill Haley and His Comets.

He was signed by Decca Records in 1956. It was the Decca Record contract which inadvertently dropped the "e" from his last name and Buddy decided to stick with it from then on. His efforts on Decca went nowhere and he was quickly dropped from that label. He then signed two different contracts--one under his name and another as The Crickets. Success came very quickly after that and he recorded the great songs that have become so famous over the years.

By early 1959, Buddy Holly was dead. For such a short career, Holly has had an amazing impact on rock and roll. He's was an acknowledged influence on The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and many, many other rock superstars. Holly was also the first inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Thankfully, many of those old recordings that Holly made before he became a success have survived the years and these are the recordings in which we can hear the rockabilly Holly. Songs like "Rockin' Around With Ollie V.", "Baby Won't You Come Out Tonight", "I'm Gonna Set My Foot Right Down", "Changing All Those Changes". Some of these along with more can be heard on the great album, Buddy Holly For The First Time Anywhere that was released many years after his death. That album contains the raw recordings of these songs which give the listener a wonderful sense of Holly's as-yet-undeveloped talent.

On these early recordings you can really hear Holly's rockabilly style. This is where he developed his trademark hiccup vocal treatment and where he first displayed his rockabilly influenced lead guitar technique. It wasn't long before Holly started expanding his style and testing new techniques that would make him such an influential innovator in rock and roll. He didn't record strictly in the rockabilly style for long, but the influences stuck with him and you can certainly hear it in several of his later smash hits.